Guide
How far do your trades go against you?
A trade's result says where it ended. Its excursions say what happened on the way: how far it went against you before it closed, and how far in your favor. Traders call them MAE and MFE.
What MAE and MFE are
Maximum adverse excursion (MAE) is the furthest a trade went against you while it was open. Maximum favorable excursion (MFE) is the furthest it went in your favor. Both are measured from the entry, in pips.
Why MT4 does not show them
MetaTrader's history keeps where each trade opened and where it closed, not the path in between, and its reports are built from that history. Excursions have to be measured while the trade is open, or rebuilt afterwards from price history.
What they tell you
- How much room your winners needed. The MAE of your winning trades shows how far they went against you before they worked. Set beside your stop distance, it shows how much of the stop winners ever used.
- How much of each move you kept. A trade that reached 40 pips and closed at 25 kept most of the move. One that reached 40 and closed at 5 gave most of it back. The MFE of your trades, set beside their results, shows where targets and exits sit against what the market offered.
- How an EA behaves. Across one EA's trades, both figures show whether its stops and targets sit where its trades actually go.
How IfStats records them
The IfStats EA watches each open position and records the best and worst price it reached, on the price the trade would close at: the bid for a buy, the ask for a sell. They appear on the Trades page as Pips+, the MFE, and Pips-, the MAE, and go into a CSV export like any other column.
A position on the symbol of the chart the EA runs on is measured on every tick. Positions on other symbols are checked whenever that chart's symbol ticks: close, though a very brief spike can fall between two checks.
For trades that closed before the EA was attached, it rebuilds both figures from the price history
MetaTrader holds, for trades from the last 30 days, or up to a year with the EA's
Max_Pips_Backfill_Days input. Those are estimates, and
the grid marks them with an asterisk. Hover over any figure to see how it was measured.
Sort the Trades page by Pips+ or Pips-, or filter by an EA first to see its trades alone. Results for each EA
Keep every MT4 trade, from today
IfStats captures each trade as it closes, on every broker account you connect, and keeps it for good. Setup takes about ten minutes, and the free plan needs no card.